Every fortnight, The Intersection narrates stories that meld culture, science and history in India. Through interviews, anecdotes and original research, Padmaparna Ghosh and Samanth Subramanian bring alive the rich breadth of human imagination and knowledge, making for a riveting listening experience. The incessant punning — well, that’s just a bonus.

30. How Metallurgy is Helping Us Piece Together Our Past

A few decades ago the curator of the Government Museum in Madras approached nuclear scientist Dr. Baldev Raj with a problem; bronze Chola idols that were stolen were being returned or retrieved but there was no way to identify if they were real. This posed a challenge not just to Dr. Raj but all other scientists in India: how to identify the origin of a historical artifact? How to tease out its ‘fingerprints’ and find out the era it belonged to? And can you use science to tell fake ones from real?

Music by Chris Zabriske and Josh Woodward

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Photographs of Aakar Patel by Biswajit Dey, of Vikram Doctor by Meenakshi Doctor, of Samanth and Padma by Padmaparna Ghosh, of Anuvab Pal and Kunaal Roy Kapur by Azhar Khan, and of abandoned swim-shorts by Genesia Alves. All other pics by Unsplash.

Disclaimer The thoughts and opinions expressed here are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of One By Two Media Pvt. Ltd. its directors, or staff